If my grandfather spoke, he would sound like Dan Rather,
baritone deep with the gravel of washed up pebbles
on Okinawa’s shore.

He would speak of the hospital ship seared into his muscles,
outlasting the rosebud faded into his forearm -
he loved his mom.

He would laugh with the click of his tongue,
reserved for Golden Retrievers,
holding out his palm with the tip of a hot dog.

But he sounds like Patsy Cline and Nat King Cole
playing softly from his golden pick-up truck
littered with tape measures, corduroy caps
and boxes emptied of Dunkin’ Donuts.

He reads the small text of the Free Press through Coke-bottle glasses
and frowns at Fox News but takes it all in.

He whistles his creaky knees across the field
to his barn of copper pipes and nuts and bolts -
it’s best to hold onto these things, ya know?